Annotation
(NB: THIS IS AN ERASMUS COURSE! Everybody is mostly welcome)
SUMMER 2020
Charles University
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
(BA+Erasmus module)
Anna Tropia, Ph.D.
Office hours:
Wednesday 12:00-13:00
Email: anna.tropia@ff.cuni.cz
Passions without moral, passions outside ethics: the last Descartes
(Thursday 9h10-10h45)
Room: P218 1. General Description and Aims of the Module
The Passions of the soul is Descartes’ last work (1649). In the wake of the correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, which includes metaphysical, epistemological and moral themes, the French philosopher reserved the exposition of his moral philosophy to this work. But which kind of moral is the one he develops? And mostly, how does this “moral philosophy”, “the last fruit of Descartes’ metaphysics” (as the Cartesian scholar Rodis-Lewis put it), depend on his metaphysics and overall conception of the soul? This rich and stratified work, divided into three parts, includes a thorough exposition of Descartes’ conception of human being (Part I), a general scheme of the passions (Part II) and a loose, difficult treatment of each passion in particular (Part III). Through the comparison with some of Thomas Aquinas’ own treatment of the passions (ST Ia qq. 22-48) – mostly, of love and sorrow – the course aims at proposing a reflection about the main features of Descartes’ moral philosophy. Some insights in other views on the passions, such as Thomas Hobbes’ and Baruch Spinoza’s, will offer further terms of comparisons, useful to better understand how Descartes’ spiritualism influenced his account of passions and morality.